Hillary Clinton beat Bernie Sanders in Nevada by 649 votes. Hardly a landslide. More like a statistical quirk. Is this enough to allow us to descend into the slough of despond? I don’t think so. Our worst enemy isn’t Clinton or Trump. It’s our own discouragement. Bernie Sanders entered the race less than a year ago saying that the key issue in U. S. politics was to get the big money out of elections. And then, guess what. He did it. He just did it. He developed a nationally competitive presidential campaign without taking one dime from the billionaires, funded […]

As the Sanders tsunami rolls across the country, the demographics most stubbornly resisting it aren’t African Americans, or Women. There are two. The first demographic I call the cynics. These are the people, some of whom are our good friends, who agree with everything Bernie says but simply don’t believe that the country is ready for someone as left as him and think Hillary has a better chance of working with Congress. To them I say, look, it’s about LEADERSHIP, it’s about character, it’s about integrity, it’s about ORGANIZING, and damn have you seen his campaign so far? He identifies […]

What most analysts of the election don’t seem to understand is that Bernie Sanders, in his campaign that has been improbably financed by millions of people instead of a handful of billionaires, has tapped into the people’s yearning for democracy, for a voice in the future of our planet. It has nothing to do with how many angels can dance on the head of single payer, or whether college should be free or just less expensive. In the very process of building his campaign, Bernie has unleashed the power of authentic democracy. His differences with Clinton have little to do […]

What’s the most important thing for us to understand going into the Iowa primary like tomorrow, a single vote that may be among the most important ones of 21st century? Who will lead us to reverse course as a society and as a species to prevent the end of life as we know it on the planet. In all the years that we have explored, observed, and listened to outer space, we have yet to detect the existence of even a single virus on any place except Earth. This scintillatingly beautiful thing that we call Life may be just that […]

When the red scare heats up again to try to derail Bernie’s campaign, we need to have answers ready. There really haven’t been any communists in the world, at least not yet. What there have been is movements of people who want to focus on sharing rather than competing. That is so self-evidently the path of social evolution that I don’t think I need to argue it, at least not with the people likely reading this. These movements have in many instances seized the power of the state. USSR, China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Cuba, Venezuela. With the exception of Venezuela, the […]

One of the first things Bernie needs to do on his first day in office is end the war on drugs. It could be done by executive order. Justice Dept.: no more enforcing drug laws period. I’ve been watching Narcos on Netflix. I’ve been re-watching the Wire recently. I’m hearing about 100,000 people in Mexico dying in the cartel wars. Fuck terrorism. It’s the war against drugs that is perpetuating the worst terror. LEGALIZE THEM! All of them. Heroin, cocaine, lsd, xtasy, methamphetamine, all of them. Do it just like medical marijuana in California, set up a system of phony […]

The human as an individual, as s/he exists today, in isolation and competition with fellow humans, is fully an artifact of Capitalism. Since at least the sixteen hundreds, people have considered themselves the center of the universe, of their reality. The new society that is slouching to be born puts the interests of the community above its individual members. Individualism doesn’t disappear. We will still have our adorable quirks and serendipities. They just won’t be primary. What will be primary is our connection to others, to our neighbors, to our community. This is the revolution Bernie is talking about. We […]

Reality inheres in the connections between us. Let me say it again: reality inheres in the connections between us. What do you think of as “reality?” Those things we share with each other, our consensus. This is a chair. This is a bear. Dreams, our personal internal reality, are not real. The people we see muttering to themselves in the streets they don’t share our reality. But of course your reality depends on who you’re connected with. Think about this for a minute. Language, which dominates our consciousness (and even our dreams) is only a function of our connection. If […]